Titanic band leader's final letter sells for $154,974

LITTLETON, NH - A letter written by the British bandleader on the Titanic to his parents in England five-days before the ship struck an iceberg and sank a century ago sold for nearly $155,000 in an online auction on Thursday.

An unnamed US investment group bought the letter written by Wallace Hartley, 33, who led the ship's eight-piece band, which played ragtime and other tunes to calm the passengers as the ship slowly slipped beneath the waves of the north Atlantic.

"It was a microcosm of the whole tragedy," Bobby Livingston, an executive with New Hampshire-based RR Auction which handled the sale, said about the letter.

"There was the hope he was going to see his parents again," he added in an interview.

Hartley mailed the letter on April 11, 1912 during the ship's stop in Queenstown, Ireland, according to Livingston. The Titanic sank in the early hours of April 15 on its maiden voyage from England with the loss of 1,517 lives.